The theory of survival, the case
of the non-physical body and
the reality of the out-of-body
experiences can all be accorded
a very high degree of probability.
Robert Crookall

The belief that
the physical body has subtle energy counterparts has been around for a long
time. In the East it has flourished continuously in the teachings of the ancient
Vedic masters dating back to or before the time of Abraham. In the West,
however, beginning in Agreda’s own seventeenth century, the idea of there being
both solid and subtle bodies and realms began to give way to a mechanistic
worldview that only now is being seriously challenged. For religion this has
meant centuries’ long deprivation of the angels, saints and other spirit beings
who formerly engaged and enlivened the higher human faculties of intuition and
spiritual vision.

Leading the swing back are those physicists and material scientists who, at the
forefront of their fields, are widening the scope of relativity theory to
include consciousness along with energy and matter as interchangeable. In this
chapter we seek to discover how this may be relevant to the Agreda story and the
case for consciousness as having means other than the physical body in which to
travel. Another question addressed is how the pathways of ancient yoga and
quantum physics appear to be converging.

Similar to our own times of transition, Agreda’s 1600s were witness to a change
of guard in the then prevailing worldview. It was a time when Europe was just
awakening to the realization there was an entire unexplored new world out there.
For the reigning monarchies that meant new territories to claim; for the
seventeenth-century church it meant an entire new mission field of souls to be
saved. Unfortunately, and as history records, the two became enmeshed. As a
result the seeds of both scientific and ecclesiastical materialism began to take
root.

Perhaps for the young Mary it was also a time when the impossible no longer
seemed so. Perhaps in her youthful imagination going to the other side of the
world was no different than when young persons today fantasize going to the
Moon, or Mar, or Jupiter. But then isn’t this the very nature of a paradigm
shift?—a time for re-envisioning the possible.

The scientists who today are leading the way are
doing so along lines that eventually will change all of our minds about the
nature of reality. As the scope of relativity theory broadens, what new light
will this cast onto Agreda’s teleportations? How might her paranormal travels help build a case for
consciousness as unfettered from the physical body? As science pursues the
infinitely small—the realm of the inner—will what is unearthed persuade
religion that uncertainty is not the enemy of Truth?

It is unlikely the
Vedic or Yogic masters of old would have had a problem with the young nun’s teleportations from Spain to the American Southwest. A difficulty, however, does
exist in the West, and most apparently in the mindset of the scientific
materialist who continues to dismiss what can’t be explained in mechanistic
terms. And equally limiting is the tendency of those who see the supernatural
hand of God (or the devil) everywhere, rather than allow that the divine (and
sometimes the diabolic) works also in accord with natural law. The point here is
subtle but important, and highly relevant to the sweeping changes both science
and religion are undergoing. By implication the term “supernatural” separates
and distances God and the spirit realm from creation. Whereas, in allowing that
God also works through natural means and human channels, the divine and the
human, spirit and matter, are understood as an ongoing co-creative process.

According to
Brian Greene, Columbia University physics and mathematics professor, and
superstring theorist, it was not until the mid 1980s that a resolution was
forthcoming for “the central problem of modern physics.”

[This theory]
unifies the laws of the large and the small, the laws that govern physics out to
the furthest reaches of the cosmos and down to the smallest speck of matter, . .
. .

Einstein showed the world that
space and time behave in astoundingly unfamilar ways. Now cutting-edge research
has integrated his discoveries into a quantum universe with numerous hidden
dimensions coiled into the fabric of the cosmos—dimensions whose lavishly
entwined geometry may well hold the key to some of the most profound questions
ever posed.1

Clearly, in these early years of the
twenty-first century, a major cosmological revamping is underway. With science
in the lead, how will theology be impacted? Will an increase in
interdisciplinary exchange and reconciliation result? As an understanding of the
cosmos expands, will narrow attitudes follow suit by becoming less certain and
more tentative in their assumptions? Will human arrogance give way to a new
sense of humility and awe as the Mind of the Creator is revealed in the
intricacies, precision and wisdom of creation?

If, as is currently
being considered, the universe consists of multiple nested dimensions of
varying frequencies, do these multiple worlds occupy the same space? And if
they do exist simultaneously, how will this alter an understanding of time as
sequential? If, indeed this is the direction in which physics is moving, how
will the old and new worldviews be bridged? How are our conditioned and deeply embedded
mindsets to be overcome? Perhaps it is here Agreda can help. Not only was she at
home in a world that was multidimensional, but she also overcame the time and
space reality-consensus of her day.

Tiller, whose work at Stanford
was discussed in the last chapter, is hopefully optimistic in what East and West
and science and spirituality are bringing to the
spirit/matter/energy/consciousness equation. He writes:

[The ancient Vedic seers] saw no
fundamental difference between the material and the spiritual worlds or between
the realms of mind and matter. Therefore, to them, it was of utmost importance
that thought, speech and action be life-supporting—in harmony with all other
levels of the universe.

[This was because] if cosmic order
is disrupted and harmony between the various planes of creation broken, then
suffering is the inevitable result.2

Again from Greene
we hear:

[M]ost of us take for granted that our universe has three spatial dimensions.
But this is not so according to string theory which claims that our universe has
many more dimensions than meet the eye—dimensions that are tightly curled into
the folded fabric of the cosmos.3

“String theory,”
he promises, “is the story of space and time since Einstein.”Moreover, if these new insights into the
nature of space and time are changing the face of western science, can the
organized church in the West do otherwise than follow? if, that is, it hopes to
survive.

With the universe emerging as multiple enfolded or nested dimensions of
varying frequencies, it follows that there exist as well an infinite number of
worlds, dimensions, or even universes. It may even turn out that they occupy no space at all.
In any event this, in the beginning years of the twenty-first century, is where “string theory” with its presently proposed “eleven
dimensions” promises to take us.

In this chapter, by bringing earlier research in the field of parapsychology together with the
more recent directions of physics the hope is that each can illuminate the other.

A significant study published in the 1960s was Aniela Jaffé’s Apparitions
and Precognition.4 Jaffé, who was Jung's secretary and disciple, interpreted the
phenomena under her investigation as “archetypal projections.” If by this we
were to understand she viewed the paranormal appearances she studied as having originated in the deeper levels
of the
collective unconsciousness, would this mean she understood them as being totally
subjective even if in appearance
they were convincingly
objective to their observers?

Around the same time Jaffe was conducting her study, Jung was struggling to
understand the subjective/objective nature of Ufos which resulted in his book
titled Flying Saucers, a Modern Myth. Here he considered their
collective psychological implications as well as the objective investigative
findings of sightings. In the end, however, he could not say that they were strictly
subjective without any objective reality. Rather, he noted:

The only thing we know with tolerable certainty about Ufos is that they possess
a surface which can be seen by the eye and at the same time throws back a radar
echo.

In seeking to
understand the psychology of what persists in being a baffling phenomenon he had
to conclude that there is both a "psychic" faculty to matter and a manner of "materiality" to the psyche.
But he sensed that physics was moving in a direction that would resolve the
question of how matter and psyche are related, and until then,

It accords
better with experience to suppose that living matter has a psychic aspect, and
the psyche a physical aspect. If we give due consideration to the facts of
parapsychology, then the hypothesis of the psychic aspect must be extended
beyond the sphere of biochemical processes to matter in general. In that case
all reality would be grounded on a yet unknown substrate possessing material
and at the same time psychic qualities. In view of the trend of modern
theoretical physics, the assumption should arouse fewer resistances than before.
It should also do away with the awkward hypothesis of psychophysical
parallelism, and afford us an opportunity to construct a new world model closer
to the idea of the unus mundus. The "acausal" correspondences between
mutually independent psychic and physical events, i.e., synchronistic phenomena
. . . would then become more understandable, for every physical event would
involve a psychic one, and vice versa.5

Jung, in his discussions of the paranormal, sounds at times very tentative and
unsure as to substance of the phenomena, or whether the origin is from inner or
outer space. Both Jung and Jaffé, in characterizing the paranormal as archetypal,
are more interesting in the meaning, in the message, in the why of what is
happening, and why now. For
Jung, his interest is also based on a vivid personal experience which he writes about
in his autobiography (edited by Jaffé). Here he describes his experience as
“utterly real” and "having all the quality of absolute objectivity.

Dr. Jung had broken his foot and then suffered a heart attack. In a state of
unconsciousness, he experienced deliriums and visions. Later his nurse told him,
"It was as if you were surrounded by a bright glow," a phenomenon, she
explained, she sometimes had observed in the dying. Interestingly, the eminent
psychiatrist’s personal experiences were similar to those described by Mary Agreda three
centuries earlier. He recalled:

I had
reached the outermost limit and did not know whether I was in a dream or in
ecstasy. At any rate, extremely strange things began to happen to me. It
seemed to me that I was high up in space. Far below I saw the globe of the
earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. I saw the deep blue sea and the
continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the
sub-continent of India. My field of vision did not include the whole earth, but
its global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outline shone with a
silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light....

I knew
that I was on the point of departing from earth. Later I discovered how high in
space one would have to be to have so extensive a view--approximately a thousand
miles! The sight of the earth from this height was the most glorious thing I
had ever seen.

He continued,
telling of an experience in a temple he found floating in space, a temple
similar to one he actually had visited at Candy, Ceylon. Of this he wrote:

It was as if I were in an ecstasy.
I felt as though I were floating in space, as though I were safe in the womb of
the universe--in a tremendous void, but filled with the highest possible feeling
of happiness. “This is eternal bliss,” I thought. “This cannot be
described; it is far too wonderful!"6

The visions, he
said, lasted about an hour, as compared to Agreda’s ecstasies which she
estimated as being two to three hours’ duration. He described what he
experienced as being "so fantastically beautiful that by comparison this world
appeared downright ridiculous.

With Jung’s physical body in Switzerland under the keen eye of his no-nonsense
nurse, what was the “substance” of the “body” in which he found himself a
thousand miles above and on the other side of the earth.

Sri Aurobindo, in The Life Divine, spells out the Vedic understanding of
“the divine gradations of substance.”

And if there is, as there must be in the nature of things, an ascending series
in the scale of substance from Matter to Spirit, it must be marked by a
progressive diminution of these capacities most characteristic of the physical
principle and a progressive increase of the opposite characterists which will
lead us to the formula of pure spiritual self-extension.7

Also invaluable
to this study was the paranormal research of Dr. Robert Crookall with his
hundreds of case histories categorized as "astral projections." He explained
the appearance of a duplicate or "double" of the physical body as a projection
of a super-physical body, a body frequently referred to as the "astral” or
emotional body. His theory was that this “finer” body interpenetrates the
physical body and can be exteriorized under certain conditions and techniques.
Dr. Crookall was a former principal geologist of His Majesty's Geological Survey
in London, and at one time a demonstrator in botany for the University of
Aberdeen. The evidence he gathered was over more than half a century and has
been published in numerous books. In the preface of one he wrote:

These experiences are of great importance [in that] they provide material
towards the answer to the psalmist's question 'What is man?8

As
physicists join parapsychologists in exploring what there is about human
consciousness that enables it under certain circumstances to alter matter,
consciousness and the universe as well as spirit and matter become more
intricately related. And as they do the question of what it is to be human
becomes more pertinent. Drawing again on ancient Vedic wisdom, Aurobindo defines the
human being as “no less than the meaning of the Universe unfolding itself in the
individual”9 Tiller’s thoughts are similar when he says, “I tend to think that
consciousness is a correlate of spirit entering dense matter.”10

Common to Crookall’s findings and upheld by Jung’s personal experience and
Agreda’s teleportations, was the matter of assistance provided by spiritual
beings from other dimensions. Mary explained to Benavides that she was "carried
on the wings of St. Michael and St. Francis.” She added she was also aided by
the "ministry of angels" who were her guardians, as well as by the "guardian
angels of the various territories where she traveled."11 This was consistent
with Jung’s theory that archetypes served as guides. Also worth noting was Crookall’s finding that nine out of ten of his subjects said they had been
helped or hindered by "spirits from the other side." In comparison Agreda’s
“guides” appeared to have been more typical or archetypal. Certainly, being
"carried on the wings" of saints and angels would seem more the makeup of
dreams, visions and apparitions.

We might have learned more from Benavides had his intention to discuss Agreda’s
teleportations with her in greater detail been carried out. But unfortunately he
died before doing so. From her own writings, however, it can be concluded that
her hundreds of visits to the Southwest were of a similar nature to Crookhall’s
case histories of “astral projections.” It was from these studies that he came
to the conclusion that spiritual development plays an important role in a
person’s ability to transcend physical limitations. Thus he substantiated our
thesis that the reason Agreda’s excursions were so extensive and numerous was
due to her exceptional spiritual grounding.

On this matter of spiritual development Tiller seems in agreement in postulating
that the higher one’s consciousness the more a person is able to function at
higher as well as lower dimensional levels. In the context of these remarks he
refers to the “energy bands” available to a person. In the following remarks he
could be speaking of Agreda:

Generally, a saint has reached a
high state of inner self-management at mental and emotional levels so that the
body substance radiation fields are harmonious and synchronized. . . . Such
individuals have an abundance of energy to expend in life even with negligible
physical food intake. Such individuals often manifest a large “light” nimbus or
halo (or aura) around the head and body.12

In assessing
Agreda’s journeys the question of whether “in” or “out-of” the body is becoming
of less consequence. Particularly is this so if indeed her trans Atlantic
flights were not contrary to natural law but according to principles not yet
fully understood.

“Remote viewing” is a more recent and neutral term for paranormal travel. Under
this idiom experiments have been carried out and documented at so prodigious an
establishment as Stanford Research Institute. The implications are far reaching:

It is important to note that
extensive, independent replication of remote viewing results has been
documented. [This is in reference to The Mind Race by R, Targ, R and K.
Harary] Here, we see applied mental activity producing results that seriously
bring into question our understanding of space-time and which must certainly
involve some subtle energy linkage. It is almost as if there is another level of
structure in our brains wherein the internal points of the structure are in
interactive communication with external distant space coordinates at the
physical level of reality.13

Sean David
Morton, a voice from the younger generation and an accomplished remote viewer,
describes his approach to “Spiritual Remote Viewing” as “the systematic
activation of the energy fields and centers of the chakra system, coupled with
expanding one’s connection to the universal love vibration.” He goes on to
explain that this opens a person to “the God Force” through which, because we
live in a universe of all wisdom, all knowledge and all desired information, it
then becomes possible to view any person, place, thing or event in time and
space.”14

For research purposes controlled experiments and learned practices may have the
advantage over those spontaneously experienced and reported on at a later date. In
studies that attempt to reconstruct spontaneous occurrences certain aspects of
the incidents under question sometimes appear missing. Possibly this is because
at the time the experiences were occurring the subjects were not in an observer
mode but rather fully present to the experience. Even St. Paul had difficulty
pinpointing the exact nature of his ascents to higher dimensions, as did Agreda
who agreed that neither could she say whether her travels were “in the body” or
“out of the body.

Such tentative evaluations, it could be said, actually lend more rather than
less credulity to incidents occurring spontaneously. It rings true that during
the progression of a paranormal event a person would be so absorbed in the
experience as to be neither objectively or subjectively observant. Being
immersed in the moment, the person’s perception would be free from both subjective
and objective judgment. Only afterwards, in recalling the experience, would it
be viewed in part subjectively and in part objectively, depending on the nature
of the questions asked by those facilitating the recall.

In acknowledgment of the difficulties involved in recollections of this nature,
Jaffé proposed the likelihood of subjectivity and objectivity being merged, and
sometimes even crossing over with the subject becoming the object. Perhaps it
will turn out to be as with sub-atomic particles with the observer having an
effect on the outcome of what is being observed. If so, then the principle of
uncertainty applies here and gives pause to consider if reality isn’t more fluid
than previously believed.

What at this point can be affirmed is that experiences do happen in which
persons believe themselves to be fully conscious yet distanced from their
ordinary physical selves. As for those to whom a paranormal image appears, their
understanding is complicated by how similar to the physical body a more
subtle-energy form of it can appear. Yet this alone can’t be held as proof that
an actual projection of consciousness in some form of body is underway. There
are alternate explanations, as there are for the considerable information about
the Southwest and its peoples that Agreda gathered. Even this could have been
gained through the alternate paranormal gifts of telepathy or clairvoyance.

Padre Pio, well known for his gift of bilocation, and who attained sainthood as
recently as 2002, was being cautiously discrete when he described the distant
appearances attributed to him as “an extension of his personality.”
Significantly, although a stigmatist and credited with numerous miracles, he is
best remembered for his compassion for the sick and the poor, as is Mother
Teresa of Calcutta. Popular recognition of both of these lives suggests a move
away from viewing a saint as someone who performs miracles to one who fulfills
the mandate of Jesus towards caring for those in need.

As mentioned earlier, paranormal travel—in or out of some sort of body—often has
been accompanied by reports of scintillating radiations about the person. Light
of this description was observed around the person of Mary and may explain why
her sister nuns and the beggar at the gate claimed her usually dark countenance
was transformed when she was in trance, taking on an alabaster quality. This
matter of an aura of light about her was also part of the historical records in
which a group of Native Americans, some years after Agreda’s death, told a
Catholic priest that “their Lady in Blue” appeared to them from the heights and
wrapped in a cloud so bright that it blinded them for a few moments. When they
recovered their sight, they said, they saw she was dressed similar to the
priests, except for a blue mantle that she wore over a long brown robe.

Were they seeing a vision or observing the phenomenon of teleportation? And
should a distinction be made according to whether an image observed is of a
person still living in a physical body or not? When the above incident occurred
Agreda was still living. Nevertheless, could the visionary quality of her
appearance have been an objectification of her inner radiance? Could those who
witnessed the vision have done so because they were attuned to their Lady
in Blue’s frequency? Was it a case of being on her “energy band”? Or sometimes
is it enough to say that an incident was a unique manifestation of God’s love
through a human channel for a divine purpose?

Perhaps an inquiry into the phenomenal is always complicated by its many
possible variations, a disparity Crookall attributes to the countless planes of
spiritual evolvement on which persons find themselves. He asks, “If the
so-called astral world is thought-created does this mean it is as subject to
variation as the realm of imagination?”

And how safe is the astral realm? In teleportation and related paranormal
occurrences in which the knowing self experiences a separation from the physical
body certain precautionary measures are advised. Hugh Lynn Cayce warns that when
entering the world of spirits there is danger of possession.15 There is also the
question of vulnerability; of why one person is more vulnerable than another.
What can Agreda’s life teach about spiritual protection?

For those who practice self-examination as unflinchingly as she did, the dangers
are greatly lessened. First concerns need be: What are my motives? What are my
purposes? In Agreda the character traits that lend protection in the development
of paranormal gifts are clearly observable. Mainly they comprise her
marked degree of humility and her strong desire to be of service. In addition,
the personal integrity and self-discipline she demonstrated would similarly
serve others who venture into realms where light and dark forces co-exist, as is
held to be the case in the lower regions of what is referred to as the “astral
realm.” Could Jesus have been referring to this plane of existence when he spoke
of the “outer darkness” where “men weep and gnash their teeth.”16

Another question of protection concerns the spiritual beings Agreda named as
accompanying her. Is their help automatic or do they wait to be called upon for
assistance?

Self-deception is another cause of
vulnerability in the pursuit of spiritual or even psychological wholeness. Here Agreda’s faithfulness in keeping a spiritual journal is confirmation of her
alertness to this danger, and a good practice for anyone venturing into the
deeper levels of the psyche.

Undoubtedly all of the above
characteristics and practices, while they served Agreda in good stead, would not
have been enough without the divine endowments of her compassion for others and
her unreserved willingness to be God’s instrument.

Finally, there is the issue of one’s self-image or identity—the question of
who am I?—an identity St. Paul refers to as a human trinity of body, soul
and spirit. In addition to a physical self, he explains, we have another
self--the soul animated by the divine breath of life. And while many
accept the term “soul,” they reject its synonym, the psyche, or the psychic self
that includes the mental and emotional levels of being. But Paul pointed as well
to a third human component—the spirit.

Whereas some persons appear mainly to be living in and for their physical
selves, others identify primarily with their mental and emotional selves. More
rare are those who like Agreda know themselves to be spiritual beings
temporarily in physical bodies for the purpose of enlarging their souls’
capacity for the compassion and wisdom necessary to serve God’s higher purposes.

After
so thorough going an examination of paranormal travel as that upon which this
chapter is based, its conclusion is that in the western world there is no other
case on record where the psychic vehicle had as highly a developed consciousness
as did Mary of Agreda, or afterwards as vivid a memory of the events. Moreover,
not only was she able to transcend worlds, but she also attained what today
would be recognized as a remarkably high degree of integration or wholeness of
being, one that enabled her to excel in her duties as an abbess and as a
notable mystic, and to do so with a rare mental acuity and emotional equanimity
that would be as admirable now as then.

As more is learned and accepted concerning the vital forces and the subtle
vibratory fields of the human energy system greater understanding of the laws
governing what now is considered the paranormal will be forthcoming. But
how will this new knowledge be used? Will humanity collectively be able to
attain a level of wisdom and compassion approaching Agreda’s? Because of her
life we know that it is humanly possible, and in her life we have a map for how
to get there.